the sweet one i love and the crazies she gives me

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i should review them, realistically, and hope people start sending them to me because I don’t know why I’m so addicted but I need to TRY THEM ALL.

1. Baby Jogger City Elite

2. Baby Jogger City Select

3. Convertible

4. Mountain Buggy Urban Jungle

5. Phil and Teds Sport double

6. Bugaboo Bee+

7. Baby Jogger City Elite

8. Croozer for 2 3in1

9. Bugaboo Donkey Duo

10. Target umbrella stroller.

Im aware how ridiculous this is, and it wasn’t ever my intention. Somehow I got it in my head that there was a perfect pram out there that would be everything I need, at all times and in all ways.

Instead my past is littered with the chassis’ of countless broken promises and I’m still not satisfied.

Im going to branch out on this and give a brief overview, but because I don’t have them anymore I can’t photograph myself beside them pointing informatively and casually looking into the distance like I haven’t realised what’s going on.

Yeeha! It’s not going to be exciting at all but it’s not exam study soooo…

I read the words of a wise woman today and it took me a moment to absorb them.
She spoke of the limitations she felt in herself as a mother as she stretched between working, studying and parenting, with the latter taking a sharp decline in attention.
Then I had a small panic because that’s kind of what I’m planning on for the next twelve months at least and for once I would like to finish something because I ALWAYS approach things in the most full on capacity possible* and only occasionally do I come through with the goods so if there’s any kind of cosmic force out there beyond Dan Harmons wit I beg of you to give me even half of this wise woman’s dedication and composure and intelligence and let me know shits gonna turn out all right.

*case in point: I’ve only ever crocheted. Of course I started out with a blanket that’s still a pile of squares in my craft box. Last week I took up knitting and the obvious choice is to pick a cardigan which also happens to be an accomplished knitters pattern and I’m no less than entirely absorbed with finishing it before we go back to Far North Queensland. Though I’m at the halfway point and I’ve been thinking for a couple of days perhaps I should have bought that jumper pattern instead, all the while acknowledging the voice of authority that tells me to see things through. (Yes that’s a cardigan. For a toddler. In the tropics. In wet season.)

The irony is I can see the lunacy of the situation but I’m not less obsessed.
And this example is not a far stretch from the way the rest of my life goes, which is a real concern because I’d like to actually achieve things at some stage.

FOMO (fear of missing out – I have to brag about my semester of psychology someplace, dudes) is a very real phenomenon and it kills me. In a figurative sense.
I cannot ever make a decision, and then when I do 98% of the time I’ll change my mind before I actually go through with whatever it is; from buying those shorts or enrolling in an interstate university. Otherwise I’ll have serious remorse and wish I’d just stayed on my comfy fence and never dabbled with the dangerous mistress that is being decisive.

As it turns out, the shorts never came but I have to return the jeans and top that were to come with them because they’re just not quite right. Which is kind of the story of my life.

The interstate university is yet to be determined but I have been offered a place in a distance nursing bachelors degree which means travelling 8 hours by car two-three days a semester.

I’ve booked a flight home for leaf and I but I do wish home was Melbournes inner suburbs and uni was the double degree I dream of.

Someday.

Till then, my gears continue to be ground by things not going my way. If the universe could figure that out and get back to me with a solution, that’d be peachy.

Leafy and I will travel 3000+km to stay with my family for the Christmas/New Years/Australia day period and leafs papa will stay here.
I know she’s going to love it and I’m that excited for her to be able to engage with her uncles and cousins and really enjoy what (I think) the summer holidays should be about: family, fun and free time.

But I feel the mama guilt, taking my bebe away from her papa, flipping her from the only home she’s known to my parents to an interstate move for a couple months then back to my parents then back to her tropical home to then move again just weeks later and have a very vague ’till the end of the year’ limit on that.. It hurts my heart to think she won’t be settled, or have a home full of vague memories of toddlerhood, that she hasn’t been anywhere long enough for me to make friends with people who have children her age, that she’s stuck with such a gypsy of a mama, that her family lives so far away, that I might not be able to give her siblings etc etc.
What is initially a very simple gee willickers I’m not looking forward to this flight very swiftly develops into the downward spiral of anxiety that looms ever watchful just beyond the reaches of conscious control, waiting for a moment of doubt to ruthlessly seize upon any infinitesimal opportunity to devour a lacklustre mamas wavering confidence.

I have been trying to articulate this post for weeks, and any other writing has taken a back seat as a result. Unfortunately I’m never happy with a finished draft so I scrap it and tell myself to move on. … Continue reading →

For (what felt like) years, leaf would only sleep on me or when she was transferred painstakingly, in minuscule increments, on a perfectly even plane, to another equally as cushioned surface as mamas boobies and residual jelly belly.
I tried EVERYTHING you can think of, and nothing helped shift her out from under the undiluted heavy cloud of dependence.

But one day while we were strolling – I on my leaden weary hooves, leaf reclined and slumped to the side of the pram, chin lifted to reveal those delicious neck rolls and the faintest of snores – I had a realisation.

I could literally not remember the last time I had seen her asleep.

I couldn’t stop, obviously, lest I wake the she-devil with sixth sense sonar sensitivity, but I couldn’t keep from staring. Every few steps I slowed down as much as was permissible, and snuck a peek.

That night was the first night I realised we were kind of out of that new born faze. I don’t even remember how old she was, surely more than six months.
But I do remember how much I missed her.

That was the first night I acknowledged that there would come a last time that I’d see her asleep.

That there’d be a time when I would put her down and never pick her up again.

That she wouldn’t always need me.

I still feel that way, despite the large number of days that I wish the kid would cut me some slack.
It’s really a very lonesome thought, and comes closely coupled with the knowledge that our conscious love is probably a long way from being equally reciprocal, if it ever is to be.

Because of this, I miss her even when she’s staring me in the eye and asking me to fix her sore knee by kissing her finger better.
Because of this, I check on her each night before I sleep.
Because of this, sometimes I can’t sleep because I want to be awake in case she cries out.
Because of this, I’m reluctant to give her a brother or sister.
Because of this, I struggle to leave her with anyone.
Because of this, I haven’t pursued my education, employment, or fitness with any respectable gusto.
Because of this, I pick her up and breathe deeply of her while she sleeps and sing to her, or whisper stories, or just tell her I love her over and over again.

She ruins me, but she also completes me, and I think that’s the mark of a great and enduring love story.